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ARISS

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ARISS
Full nameAmateur Radio on the International Space Station
FormedNovember 1996
First operation from the ISSNovember 13, 2000
US participantsARRL, AMSAT, NASA, the ISS National Lab and ARDC
On the station
Call signsNA1SS (US), RS0ISS (Russia), OR4ISS, DP0ISS and IR0ISS (Europe)
RadiosKenwood D710-series transceivers in the Columbus module and the Russian Zvezda module
Voice downlink145.800 MHz FM, worldwide
Voice uplink144.490 MHz (ITU Regions 2 and 3); 145.200 MHz (Region 1)
Other services
FM repeaterUplink 145.990 MHz (67 Hz tone), downlink 437.800 MHz
Packet and APRS145.825 MHz or 437.825 MHz
SSTV events437.550 MHz (Robot 36) in 2026; earlier events on 145.800 MHz (PD120)

ARISS, short for Amateur Radio on the International Space Station, is the program that puts ham radio stations aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and uses them to connect astronauts with students on the ground. It is run by volunteers from national amateur radio societies and AMSAT groups, working with the space agencies that operate the station.[1] ARISS is best known for scheduled school contacts, but the same equipment also gives licensed hams a chance to talk to an astronaut, use a repeater in orbit, or receive pictures sent from space.

History

Main article: Amateur satellites

ARISS grew out of SAREX, the amateur radio experiment flown on Space Shuttle missions after Owen Garriott, W5LFL, operated from Columbia in 1983.[1] In November 1996, delegates from amateur radio organizations in the countries building the ISS, including the ARRL and AMSAT, signed an agreement creating ARISS so that the new station would carry ham radio from the start.[1][2]

The first contact from the ISS came on November 13, 2000, during Expedition 1, using an Ericsson VHF radio.[3] The first scheduled school contact followed in December 2000, when station commander Bill Shepherd, KD5GSL, spoke with students at Luther Burbank School in Burbank, Illinois.[4][3] In September 2020 ARISS put its next-generation equipment into service in the European Columbus module: a space-modified Kenwood D710GA transceiver with its own power supply, which began working as an FM cross-band repeater.[5]

In November 2025 ARISS marked 25 years of continuous ham radio operation on the ISS, which by its own count had involved nearly 1,800 contacts.[2] In 2026 the Challenger Center gave ARISS one of its Challenger-7 Recognitions, honoring science education programs during the center's 40th anniversary.[6] ARISS is also looking beyond the ISS, which is expected to be retired around 2030, toward commercial space stations and lunar missions.[2]

School contacts

A scheduled contact lasts roughly ten minutes, the time the station spends above the horizon on a good pass.[2] In that window, students take turns reading prepared questions to an astronaut. ARISS treats the contact as the high point of a longer education plan, with lessons on space, radio and science leading up to it.

There are two kinds of contact:

  • In a direct contact, a ham station at or near the school talks to the ISS by radio. A local ham club often sets up and runs the station, which needs antennas that can track the station across the sky.
  • In a telebridge contact, an experienced ARISS ground station elsewhere in the world makes the radio link, and the audio is relayed to the school by telephone or online.[7] This lets schools without a suitable station take part, and allows contacts from places the ISS passes poorly.

Schools, museums, youth groups and similar organizations apply through their regional ARISS team. In the US, ARISS-USA accepts proposals in set application windows and selects host organizations months ahead of the contact period.[8] Each selected host is assigned a volunteer technical mentor.[7] Contacts depend on the crew's schedule and can be postponed, as happened when a crew returned early in January 2026.[2] For more on radio in the classroom, see Amateur radio in schools.

Operating with the ISS

Many crew members hold amateur licenses and sometimes make unscheduled contacts in their free time, usually on 145.800 MHz FM with a split uplink.[9] The station call signs include NA1SS for the US side and RS0ISS for the Russian side, with European call signs such as OR4ISS also used.[9]

When no one is at the microphone, the radios run in automatic modes. The Columbus radio often operates as a cross-band repeater that any ham with a dual-band radio can try, and a packet digipeater relays APRS messages and position reports.[9] As of October 7, 2026, ARISS listed the Columbus radio in voice repeater mode, and APRS active on 437.825 MHz from the Zvezda radio, which was still being tested.[10] What is switched on changes with crew activity, spacewalks and vehicle traffic, so the ARISS station status page is the place to check.[10]

ARISS also holds SSTV events, sending series of commemorative images that anyone can receive, licensed or not, with an FM receiver and a decoding app. Recent events have used 437.550 MHz in Robot 36 mode, and earlier ones 145.800 MHz in PD120.[11] Listeners who upload a picture to the ARISS gallery can request a certificate.[11] The October 2025 World Space Week event drew nearly 9,000 images from more than 3,600 people.[3]

Because the ISS moves so fast, its signals shift in frequency during a pass, the Doppler effect: by about 3 kHz on 2 meters but up to about 10 kHz on 437 MHz. On 437 MHz, set up memory channels 5 kHz apart and step down through them as the station goes over.

Beyond the ISS

Ham radio has begun to fly on other crewed spacecraft. On the private Fram2 mission in spring 2025, Rabea Rogge, LB9NJ/KD3AID, made the first amateur radio contacts from a SpaceX Dragon capsule, using a battery-powered Icom IC-705, and sent SSTV images on 437.550 MHz for a student puzzle competition.[12] ARISS has worked with Axiom private missions and with Fram2, and in 2026 it joined AMSAT volunteers in passively tracking the Artemis II spacecraft's S-band signals.[2]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 ARISS History, ARISS.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 ARISS, ARISS.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Images Beamed from Space Celebrate 25 Years of Ham Radio on the ISS, ARRL, November 2025.
  4. ↑ ARISS to Celebrate 20 Years of Ham Radio on the International Space Station, ARRL, October 2020.
  5. ↑ First Element of ARISS Next-Generation Radio System Installed and Operating on ISS, ARRL, September 2020.
  6. ↑ ARISS Receives Challenger-7 Recognition, ARRL, August 2026.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 About ARISS Contacts, ARISS.
  8. ↑ Apply to Host an ARISS Contact, ARISS.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Contact the ISS, ARISS.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Current Status of ISS Stations, ARISS, October 2026.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Upcoming SSTV events, ARISS.
  12. ↑ Fram2 Astronaut Conducts First Amateur Radio Contacts from SpaceX Dragon, ARRL, April 2025.
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